“I pray I might find the doorway of grace,
Finding at last the low door to high heaven.”
21 Prayers, p. 59
March for Letters & Letters for March
Letter to the Editor: Re: Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean In addition to imagining that Oliver Cromwell re-admitted the Jews to England (Cromwell’s plan was obstructed under the ...
Rattle Us All
“Rattle us all, Lord, and shake us all down
So that what is unshakeable may still remain.
Shake us so that what is permanent might be
Made manifest to all who stand and observe it.”
21 Prayers, p. 58
One of Those Serpents
“The Lord promise that we could handle serpents and not be bitten (Mark 16:18), and mammon is certainly one of those serpents.”
American Milk & Honey, p. 153
The Modern Nation State
Dear Gavin, As we discussed on the phone, I think we have covered most of the waterfront. At the same time, as a matter of summarizing and wrapping up, I think I have two more letters in me. There may be some repetition here, but I want to come at a few things from a …
No Thanks to Both
“To leave true spiritual blessings out of the equation is to place human beings on the level of swine in a sty—with blessings being understood as anything edible that can fit in the mouth, like mash or acorns. But the gnostic error, the opposite error, is just as filled with unbelief—ungratefully reducing human beings to the level of wraiths, ghosts, and spiritual wisps. It is not the case that God gave material blessings to the Jews in the Old Testament, while in the New Covenant, all the blessings have been transported beyond the stars, or somehow vaporized. On this view, God has apparently appointed a team of burly archangels to throw all of our material blessings into a Cosmic Nebulizer, which will turn every last one of them into a very fine spiritual mist, in order to make Heaven idolatry-proof.”
American Milk & Honey, pp. 150-151
As With Ahab
“I pray that Your Spirit would direct my words,
Like an arrow, to a chink in the armor of fortune
That I did not know was even there.”
21 Prayers, p. 54
Hard to Tap and Tap at the Same Time
Mess Them Up Totally
“Unleash Your Word in our midst, we now ask You.
Have it run free and mess up all our plans.”
21 Prayers, p. 54
The Soil in Which Antisemitism Grows
“But just because we have left material blessings out of our thinking, they do not therefore disappear from the world. Somebody is always going to be better off. And when that happens, our evaluation of it will either be governed by the laws of gratitude, which are biblical, or by the laws of envy, which are demonic. Because Christians have not studied how covenant prosperity works, they have opened the door to all manner of biting, striving, scratching, and carping, and have thus unwittingly created an opportunity for antisemitism to arise.”
American Milk and Honey, p. 148